Author: Jesse James Garrett
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How AI is evolving design practice: Andrew Hogan on Finding Our Way
Designers have been caught between speed and quality since long before toolmakers started telling us we didn’t have to choose. But with AI-driven automation making its way into design processes, that tension is surfacing in unexpected ways. “People feel like they’re a lot more efficient when they’re using AI in their design process, but they…
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Responding to the AI mandate
You’ve seen the all-staff emails. The mandate coming down from C-suite executives regarding AI is overwhelmingly consistent: “Figure out how to use it or you’re fired.” These people are telling you they don’t know what they’re doing. Executive leaders literally do not know how AI tooling might impact their teams, their metrics, their outcomes. There…
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Rising above AI mediocrity: Teresa Torres on Finding Our Way
The easier it is to create something, the more important human discernment becomes. But when it’s hard, when technical expertise is necessary to achieve an outcome, that serves as a sort of forcing function. Getting to an outcome requires a significant investment of time and energy to develop the acumen to both understand a problem…
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Optimism for the future of design: Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel on Finding Our Way
We didn’t talk much about AI in our conversation with Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel on the latest episode of our design leadership podcast Finding Our Way, but maybe that’s because AI really set the context for the whole conversation. As Dean of Design at OCAD University, Dr. Noel has to keep adapting her programs to prepare…
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The AI opportunity for digital design agencies
For most of my early career in the 90s and 2000s, design agencies were the leaders. They could attract the best talent, they had the most mature processes, and they had the ability to try new things and break new ground that internal teams (who were then still small and new) couldn’t muster. Then I…
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Talking AI and UX on FOW
Every design leader, no matter what size your team, needs a point of view on AI. Now. Maybe you haven’t yet felt the pressure from your executives (or your team) to articulate a perspective on where this new technology can be applied to create the most value. If so, you are part of what I…
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Creativity, leadership, and love
You’ve got to fall in love with something to do great creative product work. Fall in love with the problem. With the complexity and difficulty of framing a need and defining success. Fall in love with the user. With the hopes and wishes and struggles they carry, large or small. Fall in love with the…
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Leadership performance and the coaching advantage: Amy Lokey on Finding Our Way
When does a leader turn to outside support to strengthen themselves? How do they know when they need it? This was one of the key topics that came up as Peter Merholz and I talked with Amy Lokey about her ascent to Chief Experience Officer for ServiceNow on the latest episode of our design leadership…
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Making change through design (and) leadership: Sara Beckman on Finding Our Way
Being an agent of change is often part of the point of the job for design leaders. They got into design to change products; they got into leadership to change organizations. But the path to that change—process change, culture change, mindset change—is anything but a straight line, according to Berkeley business school professor Sara Beckman…
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Leading design success across functions: Todd Wilkens on Finding Our Way
In my coaching practice, I meet a lot of design leaders who yearn for the authority to drive user-centered practices not just for their own teams, but across their cross-functional partners. With that kind of power, a leader could truly empower design to deliver on its potential, right? But what does it actually take to…
Jesse James Garrett 